Skies and birds and flowery meadows made for children wealthyborn,

While God's outcasts, with their parents, robbed and drudging, live

forlorn,

Men in whom the fires of hope have sunk into a sordid spark, Mothers rearing helpless infants for the brothel's dawnless dark.

While this world seems far too crowded to provide us work for all, Acres spread their untilled bosoms, while the nations rise and fall. Nature's storehouse, made for all men, is monopolized by some, Robbing labor of its produce, making almshouse, jail, and slum.

Side by side with art and progress creeps the haggard spectre, Want

Creeps the frightful phantom, Hunger, with its bloodless body gaunt. Wider, wider spreads the chasm 'twixt the wealthy and the poor, Social discontent declaring that such wrongs cannot endure.

And this yawning of the chasm is the curse of every race,
As it saps and kills its manhood ere it reach the zenith-place;
Spartan valor, Grecian learning, Roman honor had their day,
But land plunder rose among them, dooming death by slow decay.

Shall we wait for evolution, let it right these monstrous wrongs, While the helpless, young, and tender writhe and groan 'neath social thongs?

Nay, 'tis better all should perish in a battle for the right,
Than let philosophic cowards keep us in this stygian night.

Locksley Hall has now a master who would claim the earth for all,
Who would make the titled idler cease to rob his tenant-thrall;
Wreck the Church and State if need be (better such in time will
rise),

But who from this glorious purpose nevermore will turn his eyes

Never, till the arms of nature clasp in joy her outcast child,
Long since driven from the meadow and the dell and woodland wild,
Till to each belongs the produce of his hand and heart and brain,
And glad heralds of millennium thrill along our path of pain.

Though the world has piled its fagots round the great and good and brave;

Thrust its Socrates the hemlock, scourged its Jesus to the grave;

Though its sneer has chilled the tender, and its frown has cursed

the good,

While its Nero sways the sceptre and its Emmett dies in blood;

Yet in Truth there is a power that through ceaseless cycles slow Will inscribe the doom of Error in an ever-fadeless glow,

That will trample on oppression, burst the chains and crush the throne,

Rearing on the blood and ruin justice-reign from zone to zone.

Idealistic dreamer, say you? In your youth you once felt so?
Well, I only pray life's sunset, bowing down my head with snow,
Shall not swerve me from my purpose, though the victor-laurels
twine

In my reach, and if forsaking my convictions they are mine.

Do not so condemn the realists, rhymesters, authors, and their way, Just because they point about us to the errors of to-day;

Spare them, though they gaze not upward from our self-wrought piteous plight,

For, though blinded and desparing, they are struggling toward the light.

Let the realist dip his falcon in the boiling blood of life,

Tracing in heartrending horror all the hoary wrongs and strife,
Till the world shall sick and sadden of its folly and its sin,
Hearkening through the roar of traffic to the still small voice
within-

Voice which murmurs Christ's own message as we circle round the

sun:

That, though greed and creed divide us, still humanity is one-
One in all its godlike longing, one in all its hopes and fears,
With its calvaries, scaffolds, hemlocks, and its seas of unshed tears.

Then this star of sorrow swinging through the vast immortal void Shall, regenerated, slumber while man's heart is overjoyed, Thrilled with yearnings altruistic, triumphing o'er clods of clay, As we march into the love-light of the grand Millennial day.

JOHN BROWN.

BY COATES KINNEY.

The Great Republic bred her free-born sons
To smother conscience in the coward's hush,
And had to have a freedom-champion's

Blood sprinkled in her face to make her blush.

One Will became a passion to avenge

Her shame

a fury consecrate and weird, As if the old religion of Stonehenge

Amid our weakling worships reappeared.

It was a drawn sword of Jehovah's wrath,
Two-edged and flaming, waved back to a host
Of mighty shadows gathering on its path,
Soon to emerge as soldiers, when the ghost

Of John Brown should the lines of battle form. When John Brown crossed the Nation's Rubicon, Him Freedom followed in the battle-storm,

And John Brown's soul in song went marching on.

Though John Brown's body lay beneath the sod,

His soul released the winds and loosed the flood: The Nation wrought his will as hest of God, And her bloodguiltiness atoned with blood.

The world may censure and the world regret :
The present wrath becomes the future ruth;
For stern old History does not forget

The man who flings his life away for truth.

In the far time to come, when it shall irk
The schoolboy to recite our Presidents'
Dull line of memorabilia, John Brown's work

Shall thrill him through from all the elements.

DEMOS.

BY W. H. VENABLE, LL. D.

America, my own!

Thy spacious grandeurs rise Faming the proudest zone Pavilioned by the skies; Day's flying glory breaks

Thy vales and mountains o'er, And gilds thy streams and lakes From ocean shore to shore.

Praised be thy wood and wold,
Thy corn and wine and flocks,
The yellow blood of gold

Drained from thy cañon rocks; Thy trains that shake the land, Thy ships that plough the main ! Triumphant cities grand

Roaring with noise of gain!

Yet not the things of sense,

By nature wrought, or art, Prove soul's preeminence,

Or swell the patriot heart; Our country we revere

For that from sea to sea Her vast-domed atmosphere Is life-breath of the free.

Brown Labor, gazing up,

Takes hope, and Hunger stands Holding her empty cup

In pale, expectant hands. Brave young Ambition waits Thy just law's clarion call, That power unbar the gates Of privilege to all.

Trade's fickle signets coined
From Mammon's molten dust,
With reverence conjoined,

Proclaim"In God we trust."
Nor doth the legend lie:

The People, patient, bide, Trusting the Lord on high, To thunder on their side.

Earth's races look to thee;
The peoples of the world
Thy risen splendors see,

And thy wide flag unfurled;
Kelt, Slav, and Hun behold
That banner from afar,
They bless each streaming fold,
And cheer its every star.

For liberty is sweet

To every folk and age,

Armenia, Cuba, Crete,

Despite war's heathen rage, Or scheming diplomat

Whose words of peace enslave. Columbia ! Democrat

Of Nations! speak and save!

As mightful Moses led

To Canaan's promised land; As Christ victorious bled, Obeying Love's command; So thou, Right's champion,

God's chosen leader strong, Gird up thy loins! march on !

Defend mankind from Wrong.